Mattie McGrath: Demands Profit Cap on State Electricity Firm

I want to welcome Councillor Frankie Daly from Limerick and his guests in the gallery. He is nice to get back here again. Tanaiste Irish electricity prices are already the fourth most expensive in the EU. Prices here are 23% above the EU average. Only Germany, Denmark and Belgium beat us. It is a price gouging and a despicable attack on all our citizens and feeling utterly hopeless and hapless really. Inflation, as we know today, is at a 22-year high, so your inaction is startling. The issue is affecting every sector of Irish society, including farmers, business owners, families, charity organisations, etc. Everyone is really feeling the pinch and is totally unsustainable. Our Government own 95% of the ESP, who made a profit of £200 million last year and paying a dividend to yourself of £120 million to the Minister of Finance. Swift action is needed by the Government, but it does not seem to be coming, to insist that the ESP cease ripping off consumers. A price cap on profits is needed and the Government can no longer bury his head in the sand. Please, I am pleading with you, we cannot do this to our people. Does the Government believe that a state-owned electricity company should be making record profits at a time when most consumers can barely afford to heat their homes? And some cannot. Will the Government use its power and influence over how the ESP is gouging to reverse the latest hikes? We have seen all Irish electricity suppliers, including Electric Ireland, blame rising natural gas prices globally for record increases. However, the facts do not support this contingent. For instance, last October, figures of matters are showing that ESP power plants, and many of them end profits of between £132,000 and £138,000 an hour at a different time during July and September of last year, where the generators, who I mentioned, are trying to buy electricity from the ESP. Household electricity costs have risen 70 per cent during 2021, before any mention of the desperate and despicable war in Ukraine. So, stop hiding behind that Trojan horse, please. This is a perfect storm you have created. And, as I said, we are blaming everything on Ukraine, and as horrific as it is, Board of Gas recently announced further hikes of 27 per cent. Already estimates include that those hikes have added between €1,000 and €1,500 to every person in his home. This is just not sustainable. I have raised this matter on numerous occasions. I have written to the teacher, and I wrote to Santa Claus, or the Easter Bunny, who is coming next week, for all the good he did me, about this, and I am again urging the Government, in the strongest possible terms, to take swift action, directing the ESP to stop ripping off customers, and placing a cap on all profits generated in Ireland. This is necessary to ensure immediate reductions in all electricity customers in Ireland, and a direct government intervention is needed. Don't send ID by and promise something in October. You are not doing anything. You are supposed to represent the people and look after their interests, but you are not. You are allowing the ESP to do what they want. Gourmaghaghur. Thank you very much. Tharnishter, please. Thanks very much, Deputy. It is absolutely the case that the ESP is a very profitable, state-owned company. It generates very significant profits each year, and it may well be the case that this year it generates larger profits than it did in previous years. But it is a state-owned company. I think it is important to put on the record of the House as to what that company does with its profits. Its profits form part of its balance sheet. What it does with it is to invest, to invest in the grid, to make sure that we can bring power to all parts of the country, in power, job creation and economic development. It also invests in renewables, and investment in renewables is the long-term solution to the energy security problems that we have, and the long-term solution to the price instability that we have at the moment. So those profits do get reinvested. What also happens with a good chunk of those profits is they do come back to the state. They come back to the Exchequer, both in terms of the corporation profit taxes that they pay, and the dividend that they pay to the state. And we use that money. It goes into the government's coffers, and we use that money to do things like increase the fuel allowance, and to do things like take the 200 euros off people's electricity bills. So that is where the money goes. And it is open to the government to take a bigger dividend. If we see that the ESB is making windfall profits or excessive profits, we can take a bigger dividend from that company and give that back to people, whether that is in the form of the fuel allowance or whether it is in the form of further reductions to their bills. Deputy McGrath. I acknowledge the hard work of all the ESB crews, especially in times of storm or outages, and everybody else. The Commission for Regulation of Utility, where are they? What is the role of that commission? Just a fancy brass plaque on a wall, posh seats, and a board of members of Quango. They are actually standing idly by. They are useless, toothless and fruitless. That is what they are. If you see the ESB, everyone can see the ESB are fleecing people. How long are you going to wait to find out? You try to raise a family in it and you see. The other issue is how low usage charges must also be examined and scrapped, where those who are making every effort for Raymond Ryan to cut their electricity uses are being charged more for doing so. So you really want to penalise and punish the people. You are doing it every hour of every day, every second of every minute. Punish the people. You just said it. You get the money back in from the ESB. What did he spend it? What did he do? Give Mr Houland a job at Trinity. 187,000 that he never applied for. No one advertised it and that he is probably not fit for. And many more. Paul Rea and many more people. People are sick and tired of the monkeys on their back. The monkeys are sitting over there and they are not the best of anyone. But they are sick and tired of being harangued and being downtrodden. And they are going to rise up because they will not put up on this. They cannot afford to live. Thank you Deputy. Can I just say we should not question the undoubted capacity and abilities of Dr Tony Houlihan. Oh, great job for him. Let us fix the job for him. Well I question it. Let us not cast any aspersions on the man's ability. Drought for life and a pension as well. Thanks Deputy. Fundamentally what drives the price of electricity in Ireland is the price of gas internationally. That is how we make most of our electricity. We make it from gas and that is what determines the price point. And the wholesale price of gas which used to be 60 pence per term is now nearly £3 per term. So we have seen an almost five-fold increase in the cost of gas on international markets. Thankfully we are not seeing a five-fold increase in electricity prices. We would be having a very different conversation if we were in that position today. But what we are seeing happening across Europe, in Northern Ireland and Britain. We are seeing price increases in the region of 30 to 40 per cent. And unfortunately in Ireland we are no different. We are not immune from the dramatic rise in the price of gas that has happened internationally. We totally acknowledge the impact that is having on household budgets, on the cost of doing business. And that is why we are trying to act. And people will see the €200 coming off their bill at the moment. We have done the reduction in excise wealth addition to that. So it is $200 when you include the VAT to be exact. And of course we are examining other measures and other things that we might do to help in the future. Thank you very much Tony.